While editing continues (endlessly, I suspect) I wanted to take a moment to talk about 2 other things.

Specifically, I wanted to talk about Sera and Garrus.

For context, I've been listening to "Sera Was Never" on loop for the last 20 minutes. Just so we're all on the same page.

Basically, I love these two characters. Both are from completely different franchises (Mass Effect and Dragon Age, specifically), and they are very different characters.

Sera is an elf rogue who is the head of a network of spies, assassins, and common folk standing against the nobility and their corruption. She has a dry wit, and is very sarcastic. She is also utterly endearing. The greatest gift you can give her is telling all the other members of the party that you're a couple: rather than finding it touching, she laughs at the thought of how uncomfortable it must've made the more conservative members of the team.

Garrus, on the other hand, is a Turian ex-soldier ex-cop who is a crack shot, dabbles in being a vigilante, but mostly calibrates really big guns. But, again, totally adorable. A completely confident soldier and utterly unflappable during combat, his awkward humour and wry view of the universe is refreshing, and honest.

The games are good. I mean, they're really, really good. But a big part of why they are fantastic and memorable is good writing: both Sera and Garrus are believable, despite neither being human and the games themselves being quite unbelievable (aside from hefty doses of suspension of disbelief). In fact, the games are riddled with great characters (I would argue Tali is my favourite character of all time, actually, but she's also from Mass Effect and I wouldn't be able to do her justice in the limited space/time I've allowed myself today), and it all comes down to some fantastic writing.

The kind of writing I hope one day to do... although not for games (although that's a noble thing!).

The kind of writing that I should be editing right now... back to the grindstone, my friends. Back to the grindstone.